Young Writers Society

everything seems far more poetic and meaningful in the blur of a rushed thought.
like when something catches my eye out the passenger window of a Subaru
and i only have a time to see the brief, preconceived idea of an object.
that's why i've stopped logging all my emotions into my Notes App,
because i realize everything i care about sounds pathetic when typed out
into coherent sentences. i can only pity myself before i have spell checked and proofread my mind. i can only feign any empathy for myself when i look through the corner of my eye.
so when she sits me on the couch and asks if i've kept up with journalling,
i guess i'll say no, i can't stand to look at myself through a telescope. i think it's better for both of us if i'm kept a smudge in a 1 AM sky.

Under the hushed unbroken edge of tomorrow
I have placed a single seed of hope
one day this will be undone, weeds and all,
and the hills of choking sand will fall
sweet-swift into the ocean tide
one day. the spring will come again.
and in the spring anything-everything will grow
one day the crickle creek will pull the fish home
and the bird will remember her nesting branch
and the sun shall find her perch, and the day, that day
will never end. and so I watch and wait
if only to catch the last breath of today,
and in it, to see at last, at last, the first glance
of eternity.

california
is the point of no return.

heat swelters &
suddenly i am paying too much
attention to the ceiling. cracks spell out
words i do not know the meaning of.

my landlord
is my worst enemy, second only
to my girlfriend.

she wants to
move in with me one day,
maybe when we get more serious.
i like the sound of not being alone,
but i think i'd have
the same fate either way.

i open my window, but
the light seeps in before i reach it.

I have yet to identify the ringing in my ear -
I once thought it was outside of my head,
some whir of a computer or whish of a breeze,
a chirping from the battery of a distant expired alarm clock
but that was before I grew up
and discerned that one can not blame
the world for all the ringing inside ones' ears
in fact that ringing long-mistaken for distraction
might be a reminder, a promise, a song
might be the blood beating in your heart,
or the singing echo of memory preserved,
the ringing might indeed be your strength
maybe these ears are vessels and not weights
maybe these hollow-listening drums are also sifting palms
maybe this ringing is good, maybe this body is whole,
maybe we're all a little stronger than we seem.
I hope so. But as I said,
I have yet to identify from where the ringing comes.

Small girl, big universe.
Muddling crowds.
She wanted them to know
she was not like them,
so she took down all her flags
and vowed only to put
transparent glass up
for statement-making,
for rage, for loving,
and these other things like
specks before the stars.

Then they sauntered down
the lamp-infested street
to shine coloured lights
into her glass decorations,
sighing with relief as finally
they saw something which they
could understand.

They made an installation
so she would always appear to be
one thing, or another,
or another one
thing.

if you were a poet
maybe i could love you
in a way we'd both understand.

you look at me. i look at you.
we blush and look away.

it's like i'm 15 again
and i'm falling in like like
with someone. someone,
maybe the next-door neighbour.
someone, maybe the person
with the locker across from mine.

someone, maybe you.

i think
it's sort of scary how people
can be so unashamedly together
and yet so far away.

She thought that you had taken
the butterflies from the farm.
She thought you should not
be allowed in again, not even
near the peels of mandarin oranges
for a little sniff of what used to be
a cocktail for skyfarers.

But you hadn't taken the butterflies,
the butterflies took you.

They assembled in lines all along your arms,
they pinned themselves to your gray T-shirt
and then you, like a strange new creature,
began to levitate off the ground.

I was the one who saw you leave,
as I was picking up the peels
and the rotting fruit
for the compost.

o you wonder where, there
on the swing, thinking one day
when will you wonder if, and drift
with the others off the end-space, playground
sounds fading and trading with traffic
wound round and round
town

if isn't where you want to be:
swings say where and what and how
and nine years old, someone told
me means
how without knowing how

The painting reached out
and pulled a pink square
from the crafting table,

greedily stuffing it
in between glass and canvas
to meet the edge

of the yellow square
and the red square,
as it tried to change

abstract art
into a sunset.

envious of summers gone

time passes so strangely here;
didn't we used to weave dandelion crowns beside that creek-bed,
thinking we were siren-queens sprawled on island coves beside the ocean -
laughing at every ship that sunk, and pretending not to care
when they took our hearts instead, we would only sing our song,
and adjust each other's floral crowns again, and again, and -
didn't we race paper-boats and become fish one summer
before diving into the bottom of the lake
to see if we could recover all our stolen treasures,
didn't we make a promise to split the universe clean-in-half to share;

but all at once i'm standing here on shore again -
and wondering why the creek is so shallow this year,
and why i only hear the bitter cackle of the wind in the trees,
and whether the castle is underneath all the water,
and whether i only swam in my imagination - or if we're drowning still
and i would give almost anything today -
just to suspend disbelief for a moment longer
and dive again into the bottom of the sea
with your hand in mine.

You are the inhale before the sneeze,
And after you I am left lungs empty
Eyes watering and nose numb

there's something
about candles

the way the wick
combusts into light
wax and string
able to hold a living flame
and make it last

it's much like
our own small hands
which can keep
each other's hearts
alight.

Smoke spirals from the centre,
a pair of eyes cut through the dark,
a thick purple.

The many-fingered figure
scratches jewels out from the wall
and drags them to her hoard.

She has never seen the sky
or tasted salt
or felt the rocks on her soles.